Renato Canova's training ideas.

His book can be ordered from IAAF website. Only about 80 pages but well worth he read. About 6 euro.

Alternatively he's posted a lot on letsrun. After Boston he posted up the training that Mosop did every day in the build up. Paces are given but knowing his marathon time % of race pace could we worked out and applied to other goal times. Canova does say though that less elite would do less of the hard sessions as due to years of building their aerobic base the people he trains can run somewhat hard most days.

An interesting key session he has is 20k in the am with last 10k pretty hard (marathon pace?) and the same in the afternoon. In between sessions he doesn't advocate eating too much to stimulate running hard on low glycogen.

The sessions of 4 x 5k etc. at race pace are classic, but he likes the recovery to be not too slow - 1k in maybe only 30s or so slower than the hard bit per km. I think these are called specific extensive.

Specific intensive sessions consist of perhaps 16k continuous with every 2nd km at 97% and 103% marathon pace.

He recommends to improve fat burning as opposed to using glycogen running at 90-100% marathon pace needs to be used.

Lastly he also recommends a % pace zone for improving ability to reuse produced lactic acid for energy. I think this may be 97-103% mp but would have to check.

Thanks T_Runner, a very informative read. My only disagreement with the author is one of the final lines "clearly Canova takes a significantly different approach to training than any other well-known coach". The system is essentially a very slight modification of Lydiard training with a few specific elements spelled out more clearly than Arthur did in his own books (but elements that are readily understandable when you talk to his former athletes and read their programmes).

I will put it on my list to dedicate an article to showcasing the similarities and, very few, differences that exist between the two systems.

I bought the book on Larry Brent's recommendations, and it has a great chapter (4) on different types of hill runs, progressive runs, etc and their physiological benefits for marathon programs. Well worth the €5.50 buying price (even if you do have to jump through a few hoops to order the book).

You do have to translate some of the tables/examples to more realistic numbers, as they are often based on a 2:08 (male)/2:28(female) marathon performances!

T runner wrote: »

Fair enough Raighne, that will be very interesting and should help us greatly undertsanding both systems. I believe Canovas Philosophy might tie a little closer to Lydiards than an actual study of their respective elite schedules though.

Canovas fundamental period has similarities to Lydiards Marathon conditioning phase: The goals may be similar but the methodology is different.

Canova concentrating on long tempo runs while the pacier runs in Lydiards build up are usually shorter although long runs were included and at brisk paces. Aerobic power reps are included at this stage which was anathema to Lydiard. That may have been because he viewed any anaerobic work as destructive to the aerobic base. If these reps are shown not to be destructive: they fit with Lydiards general philosophy.

The main difference as id see it is the emphasis on specifity early in the schedules of Canova. This ties in with Canovas "race pace is best" defining outlook.

Canovas sessions are based with the event in mind after the fundamental phase: In the special phase interval and tempo paces are influenced by race pace and the defined threshold for that athlete.

Lydiards hill and LT reps although helping the runner lack the specifity of the equivalent Canova timeline phases.

Lydiards coordination phase does embrace some specifity, but not as much as Canovas and the reason being that Canovas earlier phases prepare for substantial specifity which prepares the athlete better for completing the distance at race pace in the particular event.

Their philosphies are similar: but Canovas coordination phase (specific phase) has better training results on the athlete than Lydiards due to what transpired.

It could be argued that elements are there in both coaching systems (and many others) : Aerobic capacity, lactic buffering, speed, coordination. How they are put together differs, the sessions that achieve them differ and that is how you must compare them in my opinion.

Just thought id play devils advocate (although i believe everything i wrote) and through this in before the comparison.

A good summary of the two systems. I believe some of the points are less different than is outlined but that is because there is unfortunately a difference between the schedules published in his books, public perception of the Lydiard system and what he actually had his athletes do. Some of these nuances only became apparent to me once I had talked to Peter Snell, Lorraine Moller and Nobby. Incidentally, Ron Daws' book "Running Your Best" probably describes the Lydiard system more precisely than any of his own books (although Lydiard's prose is more inspirational).

I would need some time and thought to reply properly to the above so let me hold it for the article but for now I'll mention that I will be using the comparison with the Lydiard training programmes as they are produced by the Lydiard Foundation today. At the seminar, one section also covered some differences to training that can be made to marathoners who run faster than 2:05 (but that shouldn't be adopted by runners running slower). This also included an interesting discussion around the Rosa versus Lydiard pyramid. Hopefully, we will be able to release some of the 25 hours of footage we have, including this, but it is the property of the Lydiard Foundation so they have final say on the release of the video and we are holding off until then.

Various coaches have adapted the Lydiard system, some declaring it and some not, but made significant changes without breaking the underlying principles. A quick example is Mark Wetmore, coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, he removed the hill phase between aerobic and anaerobic because he had found from experience that the plyometric drills were incomplete and for time reasons (the high school season does not make proper peaking easy). But they still ensure that the correct muscular flexibility and tendon strength is created by doing ten plyometric drills (including Lydiard's original three) on a regular basis, side-by-side with the regular training. Unfortunately, he did not feel obliged to share the details of these ten at the seminar!

In my article, I would not attempt to compare the merits of the system by the success they have had. At first sight its unfair on Canova because he's had a lot less time to get it but the era and the athletes coached are so different as to make that a difficult assessment to make. It would have been interesting to see what Lydiard could have made of a group of Kenyans given what he made of a bunch of lads from his neighbourhood. Snell's 1:44 800m remains the fastest 800m ever run on grass. There is a list of some of the champions who used it: http://www.go2lydiard.com/whouseslydiard.htm

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

it has a great chapter (4) on different types of hill runs, progressive runs, etc and their physiological benefits for marathon programs.

He claims that to improve stroke volume and thus cardiac output (so you can get more oxygenated blood to exercising muscles per minute) you need to raise HR as high as possible as quickly as possible. So full on, short, steep hill sprints are recommended - i.e. go up a steep hill, hard, for about 8 seconds.

I like the way in the book he goes through in basic terms the physiology of running - need to get air into the lungs, get that transported to the muscles, get the oxygen into the muscle fibres and so on and then details specific training required to improve the bodies ability to do each of these things.

Something that appeals to me about the Canova approach is the use of percentages as these can be applied to all levels/paces.

A word of warning about the pdf, when the author initially released this certain aspects were criticised on letsrun as not been an accurate interpretation. Perhaps it has been amended since then, in any case criticism on letsrun might not necessarily count for much! Also in the book, one of the tables of recommended paces is incorrect, but based on the text you can amend tis yourself.

Some fantastic food for thought in this tread. Many thanks to T Runner, Raighne, Larry Brent, etc. for their obviously highly knowledgeable thoughts on the methods.

I'd definitely nominate this for the "Best Of" thread.

T runner wrote: »

Too early for that yet. With till after Raighne faces the firing squad with his comparison of the running coaches, resplendant in Ned Kelly outfit!!!!!



The fundamental phase of Canovas training is described as an attack on all the systems. Intervals dont exceed 110% of M pace in general but they can take a variety of interesting forms.

One of the reps that exceed this pace is the all out uphill sprints. As well as stimulating cardiac output they have the effect of utilizing 100% of muscle fibres. The short progression runs (30-45m) in this phase from marathon pace to 108% of marathon pace are also designed to utilize new fibres as the pace increses. This is important because even in a steady long run only 20% of fibres may be utilized. During a marathon the slower twitch fibres are depleted first. As the second half progresses more and more fast twitch fibres are recruited.

Training that regularly recruits these fibres means that they can be more easily recruited during specific training later and therefore will also adapt to using less glycogen at race pace...aparently an essential adaption for an even or negative split marathon for a runner running to race day poteantial.

If these fast fibres only burn glycogen and cannot lipidly function (trained to use fat and carb mix) the runner will slow when these fibres take over the running and burn the stores out around 30k.

(all this according to Canova obviously)

Haha, fair enough. With the launch of ChampionsEverywhere my article backlog is up to somewhat like thirty but I will do my best to shift this to the top of the pile, although with a few coaching sessions to run this weekend, I imagine it will likely be after my holidays so early December some time.

In the meantime, I will order the book. It seems unbalanced to have all the Lydiard literature on one side of the comparison and only an internet article on the other.

As an act of laziness, I have popped the question past Nobby and the Foundation as well. They have been evaluating the training against other methods for past 30 years and with scientists such as Dave Martin, Peter Snell, Greg McMillan, Nic Bideau and Dick Browne on the advisory board they must have had some intense discussions over the last few years. They are very busy with their own launch of the new software but thought I'd chance it.

45-50k@ MP+12% ? That's a tough run. But the hero award goes to the 30k @MP. Ouch. There are some real killer sessions in there. You'd really want to be a serious high mileage runner to take some of them on.

Really liking the look of those 30k long interval runs during the specific phase. Are they progressive? i.e. do you start with:
4k x 6
and move onto:
5k x 5
etc.
Would you aim to do the every week or every other week? Could you alternate them with the continuous runs (which would give you about 9 weeks of long runs).

I know the spreadsheet isn't exhaustive (i.e. doesn't contain every type of session in the Canova booklet), but there's nothing that would be considered 5k pace in there. In fact, there's barely any 10k pace running, so quite different to the likes of P&D.